I lift my briefcase to store it on the overhead rack and I jam my Oxford into the steel girder under the seat. I look down to assess the damage.A thin sheaf of leather dangles from the toe cap. Expensive miss. Damn it!

I take my seat. I wiggle the toes on my right foot triggering a flashback. A tumble back, way back.

I was 14.

The ice rink. It was a Campbell Soup can without the label, rough cut vertically, flipped on its side and dropped on frozen dirt. No insulation.

Fans, mostly parents, sat huddled on one of three wooden benches that circled the rink, standing to stomp their feet and slap their mitts to keep the blood moving. It was cold, always cold.

An oxidized chain link fence protected the fans from the pucks. Players did not have face masks. It was skin to fence. No, better stated, face to fence. Cage matches before cages were a WWF sport. [Read more…]

“Wagging her tail a mile a minute, Miss P became America’s top dog Tuesday night by winning best in show (out of 2700 dogs) in a big surprise at the Westminster Kennel Club. At 4, Miss P is a grand-niece of Uno — in 2008, the immensely popular hound barked and bayed his way to becoming the only previous beagle to win at the nation’s most prominent dog show. Miss P, however, didn’t let out a peep in the ring. “She is a princess,” handler Will Alexander said. A quiet one, too. Not your normal, everyday, vocal beagle, as most owners can attest. Instead, it was the packed crowd at Madison Square Garden that seemed to loudly gasp when judge David Merriam picked her in a dog show world shocker. Only a half-hour after her win did the 15-inch Miss P, a breed known as “big beagles,” started making a noise. And that was only because her people were giving her treats…

Canadian-born Miss P lives in both Milton and Enderby, British Columbia. Her call name is short for Peyton.”

Joy is a meeting place, of deep intentionality and of self forgetting, the bodily alchemy of what lies inside us in communion with what formally seemed outside, but is now neither, but become a living frontier, a voice speaking between us and the world: dance, laughter, affection, skin touching skin, singing in the car, music in the kitchen, the quiet irreplaceable and companionable presence of a daughter: the sheer intoxicating beauty of the world inhabited as an edge between what we previously thought was us and what we thought was other than us.

Too often we start with seeing what is wrong with this world. We wallow in ‘what’s wrong.’We need to instead ‘celebrate what’s right with the world.’And adopt this as our perspective. Our frame of focus.

The lights dimmed after his introductory remarks. Dewitt Jones is one of America’s top freelance photographers. He has worked for the National Geographic magazine for 20 years. He is the author of nine books on nature and leadership. And he’s an inspirational speaker.

Hundreds of us sat, hushed, in the dark, awaiting light to be beamed from three large projection screens. He then flashed up a photograph.

See this untamed field of green, dotted by bright yellow dandelions.This is the Selkirk Mountains in British Columbia.

I was dialed in. Selkirk Mountains. My mountains. My British Columbia. My Canada. What were the odds that he would have picked this shot and this story? [Read more…]

Reflected in a puddle of melted snow, people and dogs walk past umbrellas suspended from trees at Spanish Banks Beach in Vancouver, British Columbia. The art installation, called the “Rainblossom Project”, was put up by an anonymous group to be a celebration of the rain the city receives.

Flying snowmobile called “parasledding.”
Whatever happened to tobogganing?
Or sledding?
Or even snowmobiling on snow?
Yet, even for Man with Acrophobia, this is cool.Chatter Creek, B.C. Canada is a 5 hour drive NW of my hometown.
What amazing country. (I have no bias of course)
And what incredible camera work.

Half Moon Run are a Canadian indie rock band based in Montreal. The band members previously lived in British Columbia (Comox) and in Ottawa. They have have opened for such artists as Monsters & Men, Patrick Watson, Mumford & Sons and City and Color. Critical acclaim has included praise for their three-part harmonies. Like this? Check out the group’s other major hits Full Circle and Call Me In the Afternoonwhichhave had over 2.5 million views on Youtube. Their album titled Dark Eyes was released in July 2013 and can be found on iTunes here. The band’s official website can be found here.

“I’m going to be cheeky here and pick one band […] Half Moon Run – potentially one of the most important bands debuting an album this year. It’s progressive without being pretentious.”

Mountain firs line the banks of the creek bed.
Shadflies, flit in from the shadows, and back out into the sun.
Mountain run-off, clear and pure, glistens, sparkles.
I’m standing knee deep.
I pick the line with my forefinger, click, cast and release.
The bait lands with a plop.
I start working the stream.I’m Working it.